Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, June 7, 2023
What we are up against is a generation transfixed by the allure of desire, the delight and satisfaction of destruction which lets loose the forces held in check by civilization. Any effort to respond in a persuasive manner must come with an appeal to the heart—one that offers to satisfy not only material needs but spiritual longings for beauty, for meaning, for devotion. Evil is not banal, so good cannot be either if it hopes to triumph. 

If the Holocaust is the 20th century’s most infamous example of evil, then perhaps the most famous reflection on the nature of evil is Hannah Arendt’s contribution to Holocaust literature, Eichmann in Jerusalem. It is a work remembered above all for its striking and influential subtitle: A Study in the Banality of Evil. Fascinated by Nazi official Adolf Eichmann’s apparent lack of moral depth, amazed at his seeming inability to understand the wickedness of the Final Solution or the role he had played in pursuing it, Arendt concluded that Eichmann and the bureaucratized evil he represented were “banal.”
In the decades since Arendt’s work was published, the idea that evil is banal has become a virtual cliché. It has been reinforced by the steady stream of news about evil that appears in the press. Reports of shooting, murders, massacres, and war crimes are regular occurrences. Clothed in a certain routine familiarity, they come to look even more banal.
And yet there are very serious grounds for rejecting Arendt’s thesis—even in Eichmann’s own case. Subsequent research has revealed that he was very much active in Nazi circles as an emigrant in Argentina. He was fully committed to a ferocious anti-Semitism, well aware—and proud—of his own role in the Final Solution. The Eichmann on trial in the glass box in Jerusalem was an act, a character he was playing for the audience, and Arendt fell for it. He may not have been an intellectual, but he was no mere manager of railway timetables either. In short, he was anything but a case study in the banality of bureaucratic evil.
But even if we were to allow for the sake of argument that Eichmann himself was as banal as Arendt thought, it is surely implausible to see this as a key to understanding Nazi evil. How and why does a mediocrity become such a monster? And moving beyond Eichmann, we have to face that other problem of evil—not the typical question of its origin, meaning and significance, but rather that of its apparent appeal. Evil is often exhilarating and exciting. And one does not need to be evil to provide evidence of this. Serial killers are truly evil. But what of those who pore over books and flock to movies based around serial killer plotlines? They are not evil, but they are nonetheless fascinated by it. True banality—as represented in the lives that most of us lead most of the time—makes for neither good television nor bestselling pulp fiction.
A Beautiful Madness
And so if the foot soldiers of the Holocaust cannot be identified with mere banality, what might help to shed light on them? Surely part of the explanation has to lie with the aesthetics of evil. Take, for example, Leni Riefenstahl’s notorious film of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally. The opening sequence begins with a statement about Germany’s wartime humiliation and then her rebirth with the election of Hitler. This is followed by a view of the medieval German city taken from Hitler’s plane. Then there is the arrival of Hitler and the Nazi elite, greeted by adoring crowds as the Führer’s motorcade drives through the streets. Then there are the speeches, the torchlight parades, the scenes of joy, and, of course, the carefully choreographed marches of the rally itself, culminating in Hitler’s ascent to the rostrum. Countless images draw upon the mythical medieval glories of the German people, and the whole production speaks of the returning significance and power that the Third Reich represents. Everything is designed to stimulate a seductive desire in the audience to belong to something that gives meaning to life.
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Written by Vern S. Poythress |
Thursday, July 28, 2022
Since every truth reveals God, we can be confident in talking about God to unbelievers. Frequently, they do not acknowledge God’s presence in their lives. But he is there. They rely on him. As Romans 1:21 reminds us, they “know” God, but they suppress that knowledge. They know God even in the process of saying anything that is true. The challenge for us is not to speak into a situation of complete ignorance, but to speak about God and his redemption in Christ. And then we pray that God may send the Holy Spirit to change their hearts. May he use our speech, our expressions of truths, in bringing unbelievers to faith. 

The Attributes of Truth
Let us consider a particular example of a truth: 2 + 2 = 4. This is true everywhere, throughout the universe. It is true at all times. Its truth does not change over time.1 So truth has three key attributes: omnipresence (everywhere present), everlastingness (through all times), and unchangeability (immutability). Unchangeability is actually stronger than the mere fact of no change. We are saying not only that truth does not change but that it could not change. These three features of truth are attributes of God. God is omnipresent, everlasting, and unchangeable.
Truth as Eternal
We can make a further, more refined point about everlastingness. God is not subject to time or captured by time. He is superior to time. So we may say that he is eternal.2 The new heavens and the new earth, together with those who are redeemed in Christ, exist in the future without end, which means that they are everlasting. But they are still subject to time. God is different: he is superior to time; he is eternal. In addition, the truth that 2 + 2 = 4 seems to be different. It is specified by God. As such, it is not subject to change with the passing of time.

Tensed Truths

In some ways, mathematical truths like 2 + 2 = 4 are special, because they do not need to specify any one moment in time. Suppose, then, that we consider a truth that does have a time frame: Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate.3 The name Pontius Pilate fixes the time frame as the first century. There is also an implicit geographical frame, namely the location of Jerusalem, where Pontius Pilate was ruling. The verb “suffered” accordingly is in the past tense, to indicate that the time at which the event occurred preceded the time in which we are now living. There is a sense in which we might say that the truth about Jesus Christ suffering is not an “eternal” truth, but a tensed truth, a truth about a particular event. But notice that the truth about the event can be distinguished from the event itself. The event itself happened in the first century in Jerusalem, and is never to be repeated. We cannot see it directly before our eyes. But we can talk about whether it happened. (It did.) The affirmation that it happened is an affirmation that continues to be true, through all future times.
What about past times? What about the times before Jesus Christ came into the world? At those earlier times, the event of Christ’s crucifixion had not yet happened. But it was planned by God already:
. . . you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you. (1 Pet. 1:18–20)
. . . who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. (2 Tim. 1:9) .
. . . for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:27–28)
Let us consider Acts 4:27–28 in more detail. The immediately preceding verses, Acts 4:25–26, cite Psalm 2, written a thousand years earlier, to confirm that the suffering and death of Christ were already planned by God.
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The Lord always wanted his people to call the Sabbath a delight and that includes the special privilege of gathering twice on Sunday to enjoy the Lord. Wouldn’t it be great if we could cancel the cancellation of the evening service? If we’re concerned, at all, about the state of Christianity in our day, a great way to reverse our perils might be to reverse our cancellation of evening worship on the Lord’s Day.

We live in a day when those things that stand in the way of the prevailing narrative of the culture are canceled, thrust out from societal recognition. As much as people express concern about cancel culture in the world, perhaps we Christians should repent of our own cancel culture in the church in our cancelling of the second service on the Lord’s Day. As things currently look, this great cancellation in the kingdom of God may never be recovered. We seem to have said good riddance to the evening worship service forever on the very day God set aside for us to anticipate entering our eternal rest.
This cancelation of the evening worship service on the Sabbath is a sad development in America and speaks volumes about our view of corporate worship. In fact, most readers of this article will question that such a complaint has any warrant since most modern Christians are completely unaware that such a practice ever existed. Yet, it shouldn’t go without mentioning that what appears now to be completely unknown was, at one time in this country, across denominational lines, a mainstream conviction. Churches used to have a morning and evening service on the Sabbath. The rare occurrence would have been to find a church whose doors were closed at six o’clock. How did we get here and what are the consequences of this ginormous cancellation of the evening service in Christ’s church?
A Canceled Sabbath?
The value of the evening worship service is bound up with one’s view of the Sabbath. When God commanded Israel to keep the Sabbath, he intended for Israel to call the whole day a delight, resting from their evil works, and trusting in the Lord’s provision to care for them in the wilderness. Patterning the very creation of the world, God called Israel cease from their work done in six-days to rest on the entire seventh day. Part and parcel to Sabbath observance was the corporate gathering of the people for worship.
In the only psalm specifically designated as a “Song for the Sabbath,” Psalm 92, we have described the delight of Sabbath worship. Israel would gather together at the tabernacle for worship, recognizing the pattern established in the law for the morning and evening sacrifice, and they would celebrate God’s “steadfast love in the morning, and his faithfulness by night (Ps. 92:1-2).” It’s not a mere coincidence that Psalm 92 references worship on the Sabbath as belonging to morning and evening.
The great purpose of the Sabbath was to worship the Lord in the beauty of his holiness, providing a great opportunity for the people to be instructed in God’s holy Word and gospel. As Abraham was said to have the gospel preached to him, so too, the Sabbath provided for the people the greatest means to hear about Jesus—his sacrifice, his righteousness, and how to live by faith in the promise. It also provided a way for the people to express gratitude to their God through praise and prayer, growing together in holiness as a separate people. The Sabbath was the best way for Israel to honor the call of Deut. 6, that their children would be diligently instructed in the Lord’s love and will, both in the morning, “when they rise” and at nightfall, “when they lie down.”
Another great purpose of the Sabbath was to enjoy the communion of the saints. On the Sabbath, the people are taught how to love their neighbor, learning each other’s needs, praying for the needy, and giving offerings for the poor.
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